Actors have been known to sacrifice their minds and their bodies for specific roles. However, some actors took it upon themselves to complete extreme transformations. Whether this becomes a personal challenge for the actor involved, or if it's a command from the director and the studio, either way, some of these actors completed insane workout and diet regimens to make their bodies unrecognizable.
Check out some of the wildest body transformations actors have endured...
Jake Gyllenhaal
Gyllenhaal has always been known for his skinnier, more broody roles as an actor. But, when he took the opportunity to star in Southpaw, his relationship with his body, as well as his relationships in real life, completely changed.
Southpaw
Gyllenhaal started running eight miles a day, doing 1,000 situps before noon, and he trained boxing from noon until night. He was eating six or seven protein-packed meals a day. His training regimen was so rigorous that he actually had to break up with his girlfriend to stick to it.
Charlize Theron
Theron was tasked with putting on a bunch of weight and muscle in order to accurately depict the serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the movie Monster. Theron was asked to put on 30 pounds over the course of one month. She did this by eating mostly carbohydrates and sugar to mimic the diet of Aileen Wuornos.
The Monster Within
Theron managed to pull this transformation off in the nick of time. In addition to changing her diet, Theron also began smoking cigarettes and drinking liquor daily to get her into the mind of Aileen Wuornos. This ended up working out for her, and she was awarded an Oscar for her depiction.
Anne Hathaway
In order to get into the mind of Fantine, a character in Les Miserables that was dying of tuberculosis, Hathaway lost 25 pounds. She put herself on a 500 calorie a day diet for a month before Les Mis began filming, which took a serious physical and emotional toll on her.
Was It Worth the Pain?
Although Hathaway does not regret going out of her way to accurately depict this character, she does not recommend that anyone does this to their body. “I was in such a state of deprivation—physical and emotional," stated Hathaway. It took her months to return to her usual self after the filming of Les Mis.
Chris Pratt
Pratt played the goofy, chubby, cute doofus in virtually everything he was in before Guardians of the Galaxy. Evidently, Pratt spent three to four hours a day focusing on losing weight for his role every day. He lost 60 pounds of fat and bulked up at the same time.
How'd He Do It?
Disney hired the same Navy Seal trainer that worked with Chris Hemsworth to turn him into Thor. Pratt completely changed his lifestyle and diet overnight. After he made the transition, he stated that he wants to stay ripped for the rest of his life.
Jared Leto
Leto is another prolific actor that has changed his appearance multiple times since the beginning of his career. He prides himself on being versatile in all of his roles, but his most versatile to date, according to him, was playing Rayon in Dallas Buyers Club.
40 Down
Leto played a transgender woman who was in the process of receiving treatment for HIV. For this role, he dropped 30-40 pounds in a few months. He won a Golden Globe, an Oscar, and a SAG award as best supporting actor that year.
Hillary Swank
Million Dollar Baby is a movie about a waitress who ends up becoming an underground boxer. Swank plays the main character, Maggie Fitzgerald, who undergoes a painful and quick training to get her up to fighting shape in a very short amount of time. Just like her character in the movie, Swank was forced to get extremely fit in a very short period of time.
90 Days to Make It
In just three months, Swank put on over 20 pounds of muscle by exercising for five hours a day, eating for two or three, and sleeping for pretty much the rest of it. Swank's transformation was so extraordinarily difficult that she doesn't ever want to replicate anything of the sort ever again.
Matthew McConaughey
McConaughey played a Texas AIDS patient who was given 30 days to live in the movie Dallas Buyers Club. In order to look like a man who was dying from an advanced auto-immune disease, he was forced to restrict his caloric intake by roughly 70%, and he had to burn an additional 1,800 calories a day from a strict exercise routine.
He's Going the Distance
McConaughey's wife helped him cut back on calories by preparing his meals for him. His goal was to drop four pounds per week, and at the end of his run, he had lost a grand total of 47 pounds. That being said, he visited doctors regularly to make sure that his weight loss was healthy and reversible.
Jonah Hill
Jonah Hill has been an avid spokesperson for healthy weight loss techniques and the importance of loving the skin that you're in no matter what. That being said, when he was cast for War Dogs, he was tasked with gaining 40 pounds. When the filming for War Dogs ended, he hit up the trainer that he worked with for 21 Jump Street to bring him back down to his desired weight.
Re-Creating Yourself, Safely
Hill looks back on his life of being cast as the "fat kid" in movies with disdain for the industry's fetishization of the "ideal body type." Hill wants everyone to know that if you want to make changes to your appearance, then do it if it makes you happy. But, he encourages people to look within to learn to love and appreciate your unique, beautiful appearance for what it is, not what you want it to be.
Natalie Portman
Portman prepared for Black Swan by actually enduring some extremely taxing ballet exercises. At first, she was practicing for one or two hours a day, after a few months, she practiced for four hours at a time. When there were only a few months before the filming of the movie was slated, Portman was exercising for eight, and sometimes more, hours a day.
Move Move Move Your Feet
At 29 years of age, Portman shaved off 20 pounds to play Nina in Black Swan. Portman remembers that, in the heat of her training and extreme dieting, there were nights that she genuinely thought that she was going to die.
Matt Damon
When Damon starred in Courage Under Fire in 1996, he prepared for the movie by massively altering his lifestyle and diet. He transitioned from eating several meals a day and varying his exercise routine to just eating chicken breasts and running 13 miles a day.
Hard Work Pays Off
Damon dropped from 190 pounds to roughly 139 pounds in a short period of time. This led to serious, long-term health problems that Damon has yet to recover completely from. However, Francis Ford Coppola took notice of the dedication and willingness to succeed that Damon embodied, and he cast Damon as the lead in his next film, The Rainmaker.
Tom Hanks
You may know him from his more physically demanding roles, but Tom Hanks has sacrificed his body many times for Hollywood's sake. He had to completely transform his physical form in order to look like he was actually starving while trapped on a desert island in Castaway.
WINSTON!!!
Hanks was tasked with putting on 50 pounds before the shooting for Castaway even began. After he put the weight on, he spent the next four months barely eating and working out for several hours out of the day to drop 55 pounds. This actually led to numerous mental and physical health problems that have followed Hanks for quite some time now.
Demi Moore
Demi Moore proved to the world that she is a versatile, exciting, and dedicated actress when she starred in G.I. Jane, a movie about a wannabe Navy Seal who fought against sexism and discrimination to get her piece of the pie. Moore trained with a real Navy Seal coach to build her physique for this flick.
Moore Dedication Than Most
Moore started every day at 4 a.m. by running upwards of 10 miles. She then moved onto a vicious strengthening set of pushups, dumbbell presses, shoulder presses, and other muscle-group-specific weight training exercises. She even shaved her head months in advance, and did calisthenics in the mud, rain, and sometimes in the middle of the NYC street, if she was commanded to do so.
Chris Hemsworth
Believe it or not, Hemsworth wasn't always a chick magnet. When he was young in his career, he wasn't in particularly great shape. However, when he was cast as Thor in the Marvel universe, he started training with a former Navy Seal trainer, and the results ended up setting him up for life.
The Superhero Treatment
Hemsworth teamed up with a man named Duffy Gaver, an old school trainer who prescribed Hemsworth with a workout regiment of lifting lots of heavy weights, and eating tons of red meat. After about a year of training, Hemsworth reached Thor status.
Christian Bale
Christian Bale is no stranger to changing his appearance for films. When he was at his absolute lowest, he dropped 60 pounds for his role in The Machinist. To some, this might not sound like it's that big of a deal. But, when you consider that he was 173 pounds, and he dropped to 110 for the role, the act sounds a bit more ridiculous.
Just a Little Perspective
When he was training for The Machinist, Bale exercised regularly and intensely. He ate one can of tuna, one apple, and had one cup of coffee a day. Between the lack of calories and the extreme exercise, Bale was able to get his weight down over the course of eight months.
Jared Leto
Once more, Jared Leto finds himself on this list. Not because of his capability for extreme weight loss in short periods of time, this one exemplifies his ability to put on massive amounts of weight in anticipation of a role. This movie is called Chapter 27, in which Jared Leto plays Mark Chapman, the man who assassinated John Lennon.
Making a Murderer
Leto is, what industry folks call, a method actor. He lives like, acts like, and refers to himself as the name of his characters for long periods of time prior to actually playing them on camera. In this particular instance, his depiction of Mark Chapman caused him to gain 67 pounds in three months.
Renee Zellweger
For Zellweger's first appearance in Bridget Jones's Diary, she was required to pack on 30 pounds to hold her role. Immediately afterward, she adjusted her diet and lifestyle to get back to her preferred weight. So, when the sequel, Edge of Reason, was teased, Zellweger had to pack on another 30 to keep things looking authentic...
It's Harder Than it Looks
Zellweger did her best to pack on and keep on all the weight that she promised to gain. She and the crew she was working with made it a point to sample all of the burger places around their studio in LA. But, Zellweger's demanding shoot schedule seemed to make it more difficult to hang onto the weight she put on. All the time she spent on her feet burned so many calories that her crew, at some points, had to put pads under her clothing for continuity's sake.
Vincent D'Onofrio
Despite having an impressive and prolific Hollywood career, D'Onofrio is most known for his depiction of Private Pile in the classic movie, Full Metal Jacket. Private Pile was a dim-witted, overweight marine wannabe who snaps after his vicious Drill Sargent breaks his spirit...
The Making of a Monster
Evidently, D'Onofrio ate a steak, three eggs, half a loaf of bread, and a quart of milk every morning in order to prepare for the role. He began noticing that people treated him differently, and he began perceiving himself in a warped manner. In a sense, D'Onofrio "became" Private Pile, until he dropped the weight after Full Metal Jacket concluded its filming.
George Clooney
Clooney won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his depiction of a CIA operative in the 2005 film Syriana. However, while he was on that set, a failed stunt sent Clooney to the hospital with a terrible spine injury. Clooney was plagued with horrible headaches that genuinely made him consider taking his own life...
Making it Worth the Pain
Clooney eventually got surgery for the injury that treated his headaches. Because of the stress and discomfort, Clooney dropped in weight and looked disheveled, so he was cast in Oceans Twelve as agent Robert Barnes, an ill special agent. Clooney looks back and views this portion of his life as a horrible whirlwind of discomfort that he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy.
Emma Stone
In the movie Battle of the Sexes, Emma Stone became the tennis pro, Billie Jean King. In order to look the part, Stone underwent extensive training to become the legendary tennis player. She trained under Jason Walsh, a celebrity sports and nutrition coach that put her on a rigorous regimen of exercise, protein shakes, and tennis lessons that would terrify the average person...
Battle-Born
Stone ended up gaining 15 pounds in her training. She also was able to perfectly mimic Billy Jean King's mannerisms, and she beat a couple of tennis players on the way. This transformation ended up landing Stone an Oscar in 2017.
Zac Efron
Efron has always been in pretty good shape, for what it's worth, as an actor. But, when he made his transition from Disney star into an adult star, he bulked up a little bit to play sex-appeal roles. Then, he got cast to play Brody in Baywatch...
Big Man on Campus
While the end result was great, Zac Efron hated the workouts. He felt like he was pushing himself further than he had ever pushed himself. Which, admittedly wasn't bad in and of itself, but he didn't like the long-lasting negative effects that came afterward. He was constantly dehydrated, in immense pain, and extremely tense due to his diet and schedule.
Tom Hardy
Hardy has played a ton of "strong man" roles over the years. But, you wouldn't believe what he had to go through to depict Britain's most dangerous prisoner...
Enter: Bronson
Hardy put on 40 pounds of muscle in just five weeks. He only did pushups, sit-ups, and resistance training. You know, prison workouts. He also ate only chicken and rice, as well as a ton of ice cream to start bulking up.
Matthew Fox
When Matthew Fox took on the role of Alex Cross, aka Picasso, he changed his diet to match that of, well, a serial killer's. He cut out all appetizing food to make him angrier and leaner. He also started a brutal exercise regimen that would have broken the average person...
The Making of a Psycho
Fox's ideal image for Alex Cross was exactly what he wanted him to be like. He told his personal trainer that he wanted to look "menacing." In fact, this look was so iconic that Fox became the victim of a long-term meme storm that took his body in the movie and compared him to things like fences, train tracks, and the alien baby from Alien: Resurrection.
Daniel Radcliffe
Radcliffe has changed his appearance numerous times throughout his career. When you think about it, the guy who locked himself into being Harry Potter extremely early in his career kind of needs to differentiate his appearance massively to avoid being typecasted. But, Radcliffe took this idea to the extreme when he starred in Jungle.
Man in the Woods
Jungle is about a young man who gets stranded in the Bolivian jungle for three weeks. Radcliffe plays Yossi Ghinsberg, the young man that this actually happened to. Radcliffe dropped 35 pounds by eating one chicken breast and one protein bar a day. This is a diet that he does NOT recommend anyone tries.
Jake Gyllenhaal
Once again, we see what Jake Gyllenhaal is capable of. When he was cast in Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal rode alongside ambulance chasers with his own camera. He didn't sleep or eat anything healthy for months before shooting...
Ghost of a Man
Gyllenhaal lived on chewing gum and kale for a month. Every night, after shooting, he would run 15 miles back to his apartment from the studio. He dropped from 180 pounds to 150 pounds basically overnight.
Robert De Niro
De Niro completely transformed his body in the 1980 film, Raging Bull. This movie was about an Italian boxer's lifestyle changes over the course of 30 years. Over the course of filming, De Niro lost and gained close to 60 pounds...
Was it Worth It?
De Niro had a boxer's body for most of the movie, but halfway through production, he was flown to Italy and tasked with eating to his stomach's limit every day. He ate hundreds of plates of pasta and giant steaks daily. When he came back, he was a doughy, aged Italian man.
Michael Fassbender
Fassbender lost 42 pounds to play the role of Bobby Sands in the movie Hunger. Hunger is about a young member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who was jailed illegally and went on a hunger strike to protest his incarceration. Fassbender described this weight loss journey as "being in psychological prison..."
Losing More Than Weight
While Fassbender was in the process of starving himself, he recounted that he had completely lost his sex drive. He also believed that starving made him more focused and driven to attack his goals, but that was actually just common delusions that humans can experience when severely malnourished. Please, do not do this.
Ryan Gosling
Here is a truly tragic story, starring everyone's favorite actor, Ryan Gosling. While he was in the process of preparing for the movie "The Lovely Bones," Gosling put on 60 pounds. However, Peter Jackson didn't like the end result of Gosling's transformation, and he opted for a different actor...
Enter: Marky Mark
The role was eventually given to Mark Wahlberg. In the end, Ryan Gosling was fat, unemployed, and dissatisfied with what he went through just to get turned down at the last minute. Since then, Gosling has gotten rid of that weight.
Edward Norton
Norton has always been a skinny actor, usually putting himself in the role of the "wimpy nerd." But, when he was cast as Derek Vinyard in American History X, his life, and his physique, changed forever...
Packing on the Pounds
Norton put on 30 pounds for the role. He mixed weighted exercises with traditional calisthenics to make it look like he was actually training in a prison format. He even received an Oscar for his performance, partly because of his transformation.
Christian Bale
You've seen him at his skinniest. You've seen him at his buffest. Now, check out Christian Bale in the worst shape of his life! In order to play Irving Rosenfeld in American Hustle, Bale had to pack on the pounds extremely fast...
You Can Do Better, Boss
Bale started to slouch, which made him look tubbier and shorter. He gained 42 pounds in two months, which led to him getting a herniated disk in his lower spine. He even shaved a receding hairline into his beautiful mane. Some roles bring out the best in people, others turn you into a fat old man.
Ryan Reynolds
Reynolds has always been into fitness, but he started to really bulk up when he got cast in Blade: Trinity. He worked out for three months and gained 25 pounds of muscle, just like that...
Doing the Impossible
This experience was eye-opening for Reynolds because he proved to himself that he could do anything with his body. By maintaining this physique, Reynolds ran the New York Marathon in three hours and 50 minutes, climbed Machu Pichu, and learned how to do a standing backflip.
Will Smith
Smith snagged the role of Muhammad Ali when he was pretty young in his career. Smith was 6'2 and 185 pounds at the time, which wasn't really an accurate depiction of what Muhammad Ali looked like at all. So, Smith worked on 35 pounds of boxer's muscle to his frame. Additionally, he had to change his entire lifestyle to make his appearance convincing...
Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee
Smith did a ton of running and weightlifting while he was training for the role. In the beginning, he was only able to bench 175 pounds, but in the end, Smith was able to bench 365 pounds in two reps. He was even given an Academy Award for Best Actor for Ali.
Matthew McConaughey
Playing Kenny Wells in Gold was arguably Matthew McConaughey's easiest body transformation to date. He packed on 47 pounds over the course of three months, which is a pretty impressive feat for a guy with a runner's body...
Digging for Gold
McConaughey said that he ate cheeseburgers and drank beer all day, every day. He would take the elevator in every building he went into, and whenever his kids asked him if they could eat ice cream for dinner, he always agreed.
Chris Hemsworth
Our buddy Chris didn't always look like Thor in his later career. He became bone-skinny when he played First Mate Owen Chase in Ron Howard's In the Heart of the Sea. He lost 30 pounds over the course of filming, and evidently, that was pretty easy for him...
Just Like Castaway
Hemsworth and his mighty gang of swashbucklers all dieted at the same time. They all consumed only 500 calories per day so they could show all of their gradual descent into starvation. But, he and the crew began losing their minds as their weight loss became more and more extreme. They went nuts weighing themselves every day, and they got aggressive and snappy with one another. Being hangry is a real thing.